Chapter Text
I have found my treasure in your soul, honey…
They’ve been running for four days; four days since they left his baby on the side of the road, out of gas and with no relief in sight.
They skid to a halt, thick trees enclosing them in, ominous swaying branches scattering raindrops from the recent shower, clinging to their hair and clothes. Sam braces himself against a tree and leans over, coughing, hacking, spitting phlegm into the dark green undergrowth. Dean bends double, chest bursting, hands locked on his knees, straining for breath.
He aches all over. So tired, they’re both so tired. He can’t remember ever being this tired.
Sam straightens and turns to look at him; his mouth a jagged strip of dismay, eyes dry and burning.
“I can hear them. They’re still coming,” he says.
Dean curses, kicks viciously at the earth, a bunch of rich wet leaves, broken up soil and twigs scattering. “Fuck! Jesus fuck!”
“Dean, c’mon.” Sam sounds exhausted, resigned. “We gotta keep moving.”
Dean blinks back at him, feeling suddenly like crying, like gnashing his teeth and ramming his fists against the nearest tree, like throwing back his head and screaming at the sky. At Castiel, to come back, to take them, that he’s sorry for what he said – he’s had enough – he can’t anymore. They just can’t. They’re done.
“Dean!” Sam hisses.
Dean jerks his head towards his brother. Sam’s re-shouldered the backpack, huge hands curled around the canvas straps. Why are they even carrying it? What’s the goddamn point now? They’re both fucked, they’re completely screwed. How much longer can they keep running?
Sam jogs forward, grabs onto his arm, making fists in Dean’s sleeve.
“Dean! C’mon! We gotta go! Now!”
He’s not giving up. Sam’s not giving up.
“Dean, c’mon, I’m not doing this without you.”
And that’s the answer: they keep running. They keep running because they have to. They keep running until they both can’t.
He takes a deep breath, and sets off after Sam.
He keeps his brother in sight, his eyes locked on the curve of his shoulders, on the backpack thumping against the small of his back. Sam spares a look over his shoulder, eyes frightened and pleading, edging Dean on.
“Stick with me! Please, Dean, c’mon! Hurry!” Edge of hysteria and helplessness in his voice.
Dean tries to push, tries to force his deadened limbs to obey, tries to eat up the ever increasing feet between him and his brother.
And underneath it all, underneath his pounding feet and pounding heart, he can still hear them, getting closer, gaining on them, never stopping, never fucking stopping.
He ghosts his fingers over his pocket, the solid outline of his one remaining clip. Just that one clip left. Not enough to take out what’s behind them, but enough to do what he has to.
His lungs burn – no they’re past that – they’re like charcoal, breath fighting to come through the dried up husks. Thumping, throbbing pulse in his neck and he can’t remember a time when he didn’t ache, he can’t remember what it was like to not feel like this – like every pore in his body’s on fire.
Sam’s disappearing into the trees, the thick heavy darkness eating him up and pulling him away from Dean. The two of them surrounded and enclosed by trees, the eerie, wooded claustrophobia sucking them in, and why are they here? Why did they run into the goddamn woods? What the fuck were they thinking?
Sam cries out, and collapses to the ground.
Dean throws himself down beside his brother, words blubbering from his mouth, incoherent and panicked: “Sammy! Get up! C’mon! Get up, Sam!”
“Dean,” Sam chokes. He twists his face into Dean’s shoulder, claws at Dean’s body. “Dean, Dean! I can’t move. Fuck, I can’t move! Dean, my leg!”
Dean’s heart skips, stutters and stops. For a second he forgets how to breathe. Then he blinks, the world rushes back into focus and he sees it.
Sam’s trapped. Metal jaws, wicked, rusted contraption clamped around his left leg. Dean crawls down the length of his brother’s body, frantic panic making him sloppy, making him fumble, trip and grope at the iron spokes. He can’t see it right; he can’t make it out, his brain refusing to work. The only real thing that Sam’s trapped. Sam can’t move, and those things are still coming.
Blood seeps through Sam’s jeans, soaking the denim, an oil slick of purple-brown-red, sopping, warm and wet and if Dean doesn’t do something right the fuck now then Sam’s gonna bleed out. Sam’s gonna leave him behind.
He fumbles, scuffles fingers over the iron clamps as Sam shakes and struggles, face screwed into something unintelligible, crumpled and wet and white with pain. Dean’s own fingers are bleeding, scrabbling uselessly, nails torn and shredded as he cries out in frustration.
“I can’t – it won’t – Sammy! I can’t do it! I can’t do it!”
“Dean – Dean – no –s-stop! It’s okay - Dean…” Sam’s reaching out, clutching onto him, pulling him in. His face is wet, sweat and tears and smeared blood. So much blood everywhere, red leaves beneath them, sticky and clinging. “Dean – you gotta go – just – go – leave me. Please, go – now!”
He’s begging, tears rolling down his cheeks, red nose, white skin, blue lips, hair black as tar, sculpted to his head with sweat and rain.
“They’re coming, Dean. They’re gonna get me – I can’t move. You gotta go – save yourself – please, Dean – just go!”
“No, no, no, Sammy, no. Sam, no…” just that one syllable over and over. He’s not leaving. He’s not leaving Sam to die alone.
“Dean, please! I can’t watch you die again – don’t make me – please – go! Don’t make me watch you die again.”
He falls back, sprawling, shaking hands fumbling at his holster. He draws out his Colt, holds it out between them like an offering.
“Here, Sammy, here. You don’t gotta. I got enough bullets. One for you. One for me. You can go first. I’m here. I got it.”
A noise from the bushes and they’re here, they’re coming. Drumming… pounding… reverberating through the earth, closer, nearer, catching up.
Dean stares at his brother, drinks him in. This might be it: his last sight of Sam. He’s so pale, etched in blood and ethereally beautiful, fat slimy tears dripping from his jaw. Dean gulps, strangled heart beating gunfire fast in his chest. He pulls Sam in, holds him close, presses his face to his brother’s shoulder.
“No,” he whispers. “No, Sam. Not going anywhere.”
He raises his gun, pushes the barrel against Sam’s temple, into his cow-licked hair.
Sam clutches him tight, body rigid and eyes squeezed closed.
They’re here. He can see them from the corner of his eye, a hideous mass of moving tumorous flesh. Only twenty yards away – fifteen – ten–
“Do it, Dean. Do it.”
His arm is shaking, his clothes drenched in sweat and rain and his brother’s blood. His finger caresses the trigger.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Machine gun fire shakes the air around them. Dean rolls to the ground, pulling Sam with him, curling his body tight around his brother’s, burying them both into wet soil.
Underneath him Sam goes still, and for a terrible, endless second he thinks he’s done it. He did pull the trigger. He did kill his brother.
“Sam?” his mouth shakes over the word. Heart-throbbing terror, fingers scuffling to find his brother’s pulse, press his cheek against his brother’s mouth. It’s there. Oh God, thank God, thank Jesus. It’s there: unconscious, shallow puff-puffs of faint breath against Dean’s skin.
Sam’s not dead.
They’re both still alive.
He lifts his head, and blinks at the scene before them.
Two guys are approaching. Soldiers dressed in military fatigues and cradling assault rifles.
“Hey! Are you guys okay?” One of them calls out.
He swallows hard, numbly shakes his head. “No, no, my brother’s hurt – something got him.”
“Shit, Mellor, that fucking trap!” The other guy curses.
They run towards them, the first guy sinks to the ground by Sam’s leg, hands working expertly at the evil metallic jaws that defeated Dean.
He watches through dazed vision as they work Sam’s leg free. Sam’s long, beautiful leg, twisted, broken, torn, bathed in blood.
He watches, cradling Sam’s head in his lap as they fasten a tourniquet and stem the bleeding. He blinks, tears tumble down his cheeks, drip fat and sticky onto Sam’s still face. He bends his head, presses his lips to Sam’s cold mouth, whispers: “Don’t go. Don’t leave me. It’ll be okay, Sam – just – not yet, okay. We’re not done yet.”